But really, I havent pre-ordered too many games without having a pretty good idea beforehand that I was interested in playing at launch, even if I decide it’s only going to be a month or 2.

My wife and I both pre-oredered DDO when it came out several years ago, played the beta for about a weekend and found it so bad we cancelled the pre-orders.

And even more recently, we pre-ordered Champions. Since retailers seem to have that silly restriction that only 1 beta code goes out per order, I ended up having to buy one copy from Gamestop and one from BestBuy. I ended up enjoying the beta and paid for one copy, but my wife didnt like the game at all so we cancelled her pre-order.

Like the guy above me said, Gamestop charged the 5 bucks for cancelling, but BestBuy had no fee, so I picked my copy up at Gamestop and cancelled the BestBuy order. If they all start doing that though, 5 bucks vs the whatever the box costs is worth it to me anyways. Still, glad to have been able to save the fiver…

Also, interesting link there with Smed. I think it’s pretty understood by many that he’s taken his own advice to heart, considering “staying fresh” and “keeping ahead of the competition” in his core MMOs doesnt really seem to be his focus (Sorry, I know, I know… as a long-time VG player, hard to pass up that snarky comment)

“((the market for kid oriented games)) is a market where you have to stay fresh, and you have to stay ahead of the competition in a way that you don’t have to do with your core MMOs,” Smedley told VirtualWorldsNews.com this evening.

He also claims that the MMO market is 15% female in general. And I’m sure I’ve seen numbers much higher than that (WoW is supposedly 60:40 male:female?)

Hmm, then you won’t like these two links at all:

Activision games to bypass consoles with the already infamous quote from Activision Blizzard CEO Kotick:

The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.”

And when you read Free Realms Tallies 5M Users; No, Really, note Smedley’s remarks about marketing, advertising, and analyzing every click a player makes.

It is lame to tie beta testing to purchase. It is kinda cheesy to preorder with no intention of buying (not immoral as you rightly say but still cheesy).

For me though the overriding consideration is that my time is simply too valuable to be wasted playing unfinished games. I’ll play it when it works.

I would be interested in beta testing if it were genuine beta testing but these things are just exercises in getting bums on seats for the marketing stats.

Now, when I beta’d Tabula Rase, I submitted MANY bug reports (a lot of good that did eh?). Some of them got fixed, many didn’t and when stuff like that happens, it makes you question why you’re even betaing at all, aside from playing the game before others.

I did the alpha for Stargate for a bit, but I could never log in to actually test, so I stopped. Again, why even try?

One thing I’ve noticed though, is that on my recent pre-order of Aion through Gamestop, once I’d redeemed the beta codes I could no longer cancel my online order. If I don’t pick it up they charge me 5 bucks or something like that, but there’s no option to cancel it. Kinda sucks since I pre-ordered from there first before finding the Collector’s edition on Amazon. So I won’t pick it up from Gamestop and they’ll probably charge me 5 bucks, but whatever.

Dunno if places are getting smart about people pre-ordering just to play (since I think Amazon had the same warning on my order from them), but I guess I kind of agree with them. If you’re pre-ordering the game just to get in the beta and check it out, you’re doing it wrong!

If they want feedback, then they need to communicate this to testers and provide a clear path for them to do it.

If they want people to play the game as if it was live so that they can monitor it for performance issues, then there’s no reason not to treat it as a free trial. The main thing is that if you play it, the devs get their tests.

Personally I prefer to be more involved with testing. But they might be past that phase.

That’s exactly the wrong attitude to take into a beta test though….. you’re SUPPOSED to be there to try to help make the game better, not decide if you want to play it. (You may make that decision in the end anyways – but it shouldn’t be your motivation.)

The last game I beta tested (Web Wars, two months ago, just went live this month) actually gave testers Amazon gift certificates at the end of the process as a show of appreciation. It was both unexpected, unasked for, and appreciated.

(I also think it’s a bit silly to try to game gamers.)